The Power of Song: The Cultural Politics of Singers Around the Globe
Edited by Levi S. Gibbs
Foreword / Elijah Wald (1,000 words)
Ch. 1: “Introduction: The Cultural Politics of Singers Around the Globe” / Levi S. Gibbs (8,000 words)
Part I: Becoming Icons
Preface / Jeff Todd Titon (1,000 words)
Ch. 2: “Becoming a ‘Folk’ Icon: Pete Seeger and Musical Activism” / Anthony Seeger (7,000 words)
This chapter will begin with Walt Whitman’s ideal of a working-class hero (Garman 2000) to look at how Pete Seeger was transformed from an unsuccessful journalist to an icon of a politically activist “folk” musician. This change was influenced by family history, certain key individuals including his father Charles Seeger, Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, and his wife Toshi, his commitment to certain ideals, his approach to song leading, and his responses to the repression of the McCarthy era during the 1950s. Although the focus of his music shifted over the decades from union organizing to civil rights, anti-war, and environmental issues, he was seen by his fans to embody a political idealism, musical charisma, and personal morality that made him an icon in the second half of the twentieth century.
Ch. 3: “Idolatry and Iconoclasm in K-Pop Fandom” / John Lie (7,000 words)
K-pop has surged in the past decade to become a global popular music sensation, and in so doing has relied upon and generated stars who are popular icons and idols. In particular, they brand themselves as “real” and cultivate authenticity via participatory fandom. Simultaneously, however, K-pop exemplifies the logic of the culture industry that entails the exploitation and super-exploitation of its icons and idols. Paradoxically, the passion of participatory fandom resolves the tensions and contradictions by embracing the positive and the negative and thereby entrenching its cult-like devotion.
Ch. 4: “An Ordinary Icon: Cassettes, Counter Histories, and Shaykh Imam” / Andrew G. Simon (7,000 words)
This chapter explores the making of Shaykh Imam, an “ordinary icon” whose critical compositions boldly challenged the Egyptian government’s hold on history. Beginning with a brief overview of Imam’s life, the chapter examines the centrality of audiocassette technology to his career. After documenting the productive power and circulatory potential of audiotapes at a point in time when Egyptian radio was state-controlled, it pays particular attention to a single song that serves as the informal soundtrack of a historic event: French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s visit to Egypt on December 10, 1975. In d’Estaing, Imam openly mocks the politician’s promises, offering one of several counter narratives that angered Egyptian authorities and energized the Arab left. Turning to Imam’s performances online, where YouTube and Facebook act as informal archives, the chapter then considers Imam’s significance to the Arab left in a time of Islamic revival. Ultimately, it concludes by addressing Imam’s surprising resurgence during the “Arab Spring.”
Part II: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and Class
Preface / Eric Lott (1,000 words)
Ch. 5: “All On They Mouth Like Liquor” / Treva Lindsey (7,000 words)
Over twenty years ago, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter achieved her first major success in the popular music industry as the lead singer of one of the bestselling female music groups of all time, Destiny’s Child. Her star quality was undeniable, and yet her rise to iconicity was not. As a Black woman from Houston, Texas, introduced in a moment in which growing mainstream disinterest in Black female vocalists anchored in the rhythm and blues tradition declined, her emergence as arguably the greatest living entertainer in pop music defied even more celebratory expectations. Compared to legendary artists such as Michael Jackson and Tina Turner, Beyoncé rightfully enters into any conversation about elite performers. Her legacy, however, is still unfolding. Beyoncé’s ascension to unprecedented celebrity can be attributed to numerous factors, and yet any explication of her unique stardom would fall short without a robust understanding of the history of Black women in pop music. Knowles-Carter exists both within and outside of a tradition in which Black female superstardom is achievable. Contending with racism, sexism, regionalism, and misogynoir—a distinct form of racialized misogyny directed towards Black women, girls, and femmes—Black women in the mainstream music industry face distinct barriers in becoming forces in the music industry. This chapter explores not only Beyoncé becoming pop music royalty, it grapples with how and why Beyoncé encountered, broke down, and transcended the numerous barriers Black women face in an industry rooted in exploiting, discarding, and devaluing Black women’s artistry. It ponders: when were her Blackness, womaness, and Southerness deemed liabilities or flaws to be masked or rendered hyper-visible? Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s stardom illuminates both the possibilities and the limitations of an industry still struggling with valuing the talent of Black women.
Ch. 6: “Compromise and Competition: The Musical Identities of Afro-Cuban Women Singers” / Christina D. Abreu (7,000 words)
Ch. 7: “Challenging the Divide between Elite and Mass Culture: Opera Icon Beverly Sills” / Nancy Guy (7,000 words)
Part III: Cultural Symbols and Diasporas
Preface / Ruth Hellier (1,000 words)
Ch. 8: “Artful Politics of the Voice: 'Queen of Romani Music' Esma Redžepova” / Carol Silverman (7,000 words)
This chapter explores the legacy of Macedonian Romani superstar vocalist Esma Redžepova (1944-2016) in relation to issues of gender, ethnicity, race, and representation. I argue that Esma’s success is due to her non-Romani mentor's creation of a new Romani performance niche on concert stages. Esma drew on stereotypes of Romani women as exotic, emotional, and sexual, but she re-made them as respectable. She also bridged the musical worlds of Roma and non-Roma and helped to reconfigure Yugoslav multiculturalist heritage to include Roma; yet Roma continue to occupy a racialized subaltern position, and her legacy is officially ignored.
Ch. 9: “Teresa Teng and the Phantom Limb: Embodying Japan’s Cold War” / Michael Bourdaghs (7,000 words)
This chapter takes up Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng (Deng Lijun) within the context of Japan’s Cold War. Enormously popular in Japan and across East Asia during the 1970s and 80s, Teng’s career negotiated a number of tricky Cold War tensions, including the afterlife of the Japanese empire, the Beijing/Taipei rivalry for hegemony in the region, and the emergence of new patterns of cross-regional media culture. In particular, the chapter will explore ways her music and image spoke to the widespread desire among Japanese audiences for a nonaligned Japan.
Ch. 10: “Women, Political Voice, and the South African Diaspora 1959-2020: Playing the 'Less Good Idea' with the Voices of Black Womanism” / Carol Muller (7,000 words)
This chapter will reflect on new South African diasporas as shaped by discourses around apartheid/post-apartheid and freedom in the voices/biographies of singers: Miriam Makeba, Sathima Bea Benjamin, Thuli Dumakude, Sibongile Khumalo, Tu Nokwe, and Melanie Scholtz. They have crossed the Atlantic from the late 1950s to the present, articulating various ideas of home and away in their voices, ideas shaped by shifting senses of history, politics, language, gender, and memory.
Part IV: Lyrics, Lives, and Society as Interweaving Narratives
Preface / Kwame Dawes (1,000 words)
Ch. 11: “Dolly Parton, Transmedia Storytelling, and Social Change” / Leigh H. Edwards (7,000 words)
This chapter analyzes the recent Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings anthology series on Netflix for how it rewrites some of Parton’s classic songs, building on her well-known autobiography but layering in new contexts and social critiques. In the episodes “Jolene” and “Two Doors Down,” Parton draws on her own life narratives, the original song lyrics, and adds in new fictional storylines. As she revises those narratives, she adds in new social critiques, for example supporting gender equity and LGBTQ+ rights, and she engages in innovative transmedia storytelling.
Ch. 12: “The Vocal Narratives of Lata Mangeshkar: Gender, Politics, and Nation in India” / Natalie Sarrazin (7,000 words)
No single voice in India embodied and represented Indian identity quite like that of film playback singer Lata Mangeshkar. This chapter examines Lata’s vocal imprint at a critical juncture in India’s history—a confluence of post-colonialism, nationalism, and desire for a new “femininity.” Lata not only developed a unique aesthetic and personal sound print emulated by hundreds of playback singers for decades, but her life in film songs wove their strains into India’s memory, culture, and desire through the films’ narratives. Ultimately, Lata’s voice and recordings came to embody a system of sounds outside of the film world which represented a critical female performativity and the newly minted nation itself.
Ch. 13: “Ya Toyour: One Song in Two Voices” / Katherine Meizel (7,000 words)
In August of 2013, American singer Jennifer Grout stood in a Beirut television studio, performing one song in two voices. Requiring both the techniques and timbres of classic Arab song and those of Western opera, “Ya Toyour” (“Oh, Birds”) took its singer through tarab and bel canto paces, juxtaposing maqam virtuosity and light Western coloratura in quick oscillation between one phrase and another. A non-Arab former voice major who barely knew the language in which she was singing, Jennifer Grout nevertheless made the finals of Arabs Got Talent. In November 2016, Syrian singer Lubana al-Quntar stood on a stage in Ohio, presenting “Ya Toyour” to an audience made up of local music-lovers and a coterie of newly settled refugees. A recent refugee of the Syrian civil war herself, she was performing at a concert intended to foster cross-cultural understanding in the region. When Muhammad Al-Qasabji composed “Ya Toyour” in 1941, the song was an aesthetic experiment in crossing musico-cartographical borders. Since that time, as these borders have been at once eroded and reaffirmed through geopolitical and technological upheaval, “Ya Toyour” has taken on new meanings. This chapter examines the bridges “Ya Toyour” has built, and the personal and cultural significance the song holds in the lives of two uprooted singers.